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10 Weird & Wonderful Facts About Pillows, Bedding & Sleep

05 August 2015

- The concept of the bed pillow is believed to date back to prehistoric times, when a pillow used to be simply a stone, a piece of wood or bundled grass.

- The most expensive bed sheets in the world are made by a British company called Charlotte Thomas. The egyptian cotton sheets are a thousand thread count with 22 carat gold thread woven through them. Just a pillow case will set you back £1,200.

- In 2012 two bank robbers escaped a prison in Chicago USA by tying together bed sheets, attaching them to bars of their cell and scaling down 15 floors of the high-rise prison. The bedding rope measured 200ft and was knotted approx. every 6ft.

- You spend one third of your life in bed, that's roughly around 25 years.

- The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

- It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.

- Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.

- A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year

- The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.